Dear colleagues,

Welcome back! I hope you have had a fantastic break and managed to recharge your batteries. It is great to have you all back at Balfron High. I am feeling really positive about the year ahead.

SQA results are pretty much as expected. Thank you for your hard work in supporting our young people through another unsettled year. Overall, the results are good with the quality of passes strong on the whole. We also have a good number of candidates who are entitled to appeal and I appreciate you help in getting evidence together for them. Our S4 pupils did really well - 74% attaining 5 or more N5 passes. We have dropped significantly in breadth and depth with S5 due to the high number of withdrawals - 30% passed 5 or more Highers. An important focus for our young people and the school will be to ensure that the new S6 who have not attained 5 Highers as course to get them close to or over this important measure - and to keep them in courses.

Thanks to the Leadership Team and colleagues who helped with phone calls to pupils. We called every S4-6 pupil from last session to discuss their exam results, congratulate, support or to simply leave a message.

As agreed last session, this is the year of challenge at Balfron High. Simply put, that means that our focus is helping us gain a shared understanding of what challenge looks like and helping pupils and their parents/carers understand the value of a challenging environment.

A whole school approach based on the principles of cognitive science, led by Project Leads, Michelle, Heather, Pam and David, will help give us and our families all the tools to do this really confidently. All in all it is an exciting time to be part of the teaching and support team at Balfron.

Great to have you all here. Have a great week.

Elaine

CLPL Corner

As we start our year of challenge there are a few important considerations to make. This blog on the left, written by a science teacher, gives a helpful, common sense perspective of the key things to consider:

• Do we have a shared understanding of what challenge looks like?

• Where does the balance lie between challenge and support?

• Does our curriculum inspire and challenge?

• Do pupils understand the value of challenge and expect it?

• The link between difficulty and resilience

• Normalising errors & growth mindset

The blog is a quick and easy read and will reassure you about what you do!

Back to basics with Rosenshine's Principles

Rosenshine's Principles combine three research areas, cognitive science, classroom practice and cognitive support and how they complement each other by addressing how:

• we learn and acquire new information

• great teachers implement effective classroom practice

• teachers can support learners to learn complex material

Reflection for the week:

1. How many pupils dominate your lessons?

2. How do you know if they all understood?